I finally finished my first antenna tonight! I made a twinlead slim jim and tried getting on the air. Unfortunately, there aren’t many people on this late on a holiday evening. I was able to make one contact with a gentleman up in Placerville. He reported me 5×5, so I must have been hitting the repeater fairly strong. I’ll try again tomorrow, during the noon net at least.
The only difficulty I found with this design is the feedpoint. Stripping the insulation mid-cable is a little fiddly, but a sharp knife does wonders. When I soldered the coax (RG-58), I should have done the shield first–it was a bear to solder the (stranded) shield once the center conductor was already attached. A pair of “third hands” may have helped.
My friends and family know that we generally don’t watch TV, so I haven’t been too worried about the digital television conversion issue. Likewise it was no big deal when I heard that the DTV-to-analog rebate program was suspended due to depletion of funds. But now that they’ve got funding again, I figured I might as well take advantage of the $40 rebate.
I tried to apply via the TV converter box coupon program web site, but it kept throwing errors. The over-the-phone application worked fine. Our coupons are supposed to be in the mail on March 27. The recorded information says that mailing can take up to three weeks, but the program web site now claims to be using first class mail so it shouldn’t take that long.
I’m going to try and get an external antenna hooked up this month, so that’ll be ready when it’s time to buy/install the converter box.
